Sometimes people want to know how to write a story from the point of view of a murderer and make her sympathetic. I think the answer is that you start by having her look for her car keys, because everybody knows what it's like.

I just like doing it, I like writing.

It's hard to say which of us is luckier, the ones who go through long periods when they can't write or the ones who can write pretty easily.

Telling someone to be confident in the abstract is not going to make it easier for the unconfident writer to actually get herself or himself to the point of being able to put in the upsetting stuff.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.

I began to see, again and again, stories that were first confusing and second where the emotional impact was muted because the big scene came before the explanation of what was going on. There was a reverse chronological order as well as a concealment of what exactly was going on. I think often that comes out of the fear of being boring, and sometimes I think it's just an attempt to seem clever.